Angel & Hannah by Ishle Park (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

a foal, a light I can barely

contain…I feel…rapturous?

Water breaking through a vase. Chaos ~ a dancing star in me!

My belly, housing hot energy

sparked by sunsets, sad eyes, kisses…a living

thing made by Love. How miraculous? I veer

away from cars, smog, stop in to a fancy-lit

café on Tenth Street, craving

fresh lemon slices.

I wanna guard myself from city ~ evils — my body is wiser than me.

Young lioness, ready to rip apart

any beast. Is this what it feels like? Aigu, uma, is this how you glowed?

Was this private motherlove enough? This quiet-body bliss?

Tell me. What should I do? I bite my lip, soak blood in my napkin.

Job Hunt

Forty-second Street. Home of the hand-pocket-hustle,

always a help-wanted sign strung on a smudged glass window.

Angel enters the low-roofed BBQ joint, Hannah in

tow behind, into a cigar-stained musk. Lamps frayed

with red tassels. He asks for an application; fills

it out at the bar table. A blank

look on his face. He fills in spaces slow as dust; she flanks

his side, hisses correct spellings. One waitress trips. She

spills her mug of dark ale watching them cheat,

fidget, stall. His right hand stutters d’s into b’s.

Hannah hisses, Stupid.

In ten minutes, Angel rips up his splotched paper. Exits.

She trails behind, wordless. They hail a taxi.

Inside, she sobs, loud. He cries, soundless.

Hunger

he’s so hungry he can’t even think

a bag of chips for breakfast and only if he’s lucky

angie will fix him

a plate of leftover pernil but it’s chips

pizza most days plus a few sniffs

of that good old yeyo tired n broke

wired n broke drinking coke

sniffin coke he’s sick of it ready to quit but shit

one day a week is not enough cuz

by monday he’s down to quarter waters

from jaquelina’s so angel dreams

of barbecued baby back ribs ordered at charlies

or a rough slab of twelve-oz steak

tender not tough

Uma (Hannah)

I’m curled in bed, clutching a pillow,

stomach rippling. Nothing in the fridge

’cept peanut butter & beer. All of a sudden,

hunger collapses me.

Wanna week at home, uma’s galbi chim,

seven plates of banchan, spinach, meluchi,

kimchee, kochujang, cucumbers, salmon head,

talking to her barefoot in the kitchen

while the fan chops smoke into ribbons,

or after, when I’m full, oily, bloated,

when I nest my palms over my gut & lull.

Rest like a hammock swing

under fading light before apa

comes home wheezing curses,

before afternoon sours like old kimchee.

Oh uma, I miss you uma-ing me.

Beni

Hannah yells at Angel

in front of Sady’s brownstone

steps. They’re shaded by maples,

but her voice carries. Beni

walks towards them, she clams up.

Ice flows in her veins.

Yo, what’s the problem? he drawls.

I hear your mouth two blocks

away, up Harman.

It’s him, she spits,

hands attacking air,

but Beni warns, Chill, chill.

Angel’s a man, not a kid,

ma. Watch how you talk to him.

Apa

Watch how you talk to him ~

Beni’s words ring in her

hours later like a morning alarm ~

didn’t she hiss the same thing

once to her father? Watch

how you talk to my uma, each word

a dagger…she brushes her teeth, enveloped

in quiet. Angel sidesteps as she enters the bedroom,

filling it with her buzz.

After all those years,

she thinks,

I’m becoming Him.

She sits alone, half-in-shadow,

half-in-stark-light.

Cocaine

He’s on it bad again.

It darkens the petals

under his eyes. All luminous metals

mined from his skin.

He fails her ET test —

fingertip to fingertip,

she can tell when he’s high

cuz his blood throbs into hers

like trainwreck — one hot, wired mess.

Motherfucker! she spits.

What the fuck. She hurls a shot glass

across the linoleum. It splinters into bits.

At night, she sleeps with her back

to his bottle-hard

dick. Both of them

ground to shards.

Survive

She hears stories. Sometimes, her sweet Angel

is not an angel, when his boys circle up

to share tales of bravado, of wilding out

on the trains ~ she stays on the fringes

of conversation, hears scraps of details

that make her arm hairs rise — He’s a fighter,

Googie says. When I got jumped by those

Nietas, only Angel came to my side —

It was eight to two, but he rammed that sucka

with a screwdriver in his side, knocked

another one’s front tooth out — ooh,

flaco’s no joke, they laugh. She cringes

to hear such brutality, she doesn’t like

what it takes to survive in the streets,

Why? Why do you do that shit? she asks.

I do what I gotta do to survive, he says simply.

Godless

Because of one mistake —

no food for breakfast, the girl forgot to say —

she must stay awake while they

suck, scrape the baby.

Small walnut. Hardens, turns

her back on the world. Nurses

her hole. Black canyon. No one tell her

shit. Don’t speak. Leave. Over-

head lights green, pallid.

Emptied of godlight. Girl blight.

Nothing divine. But one nurse sops

sweat from her forehead, stands by

the iron bed.

Grips tight her hand.

Outside, they shake signs at her —

half-formed fetuses, spilt. Curdled.

An urge to murder them.

Bash feathered hair on concrete. Tell

them what she knows —

No one wins, ever.

The sky gray, indifferent.

Taxicabs roam;

stray mongrels.

She hails one down,

climbs into its rancid mouth.

Rolls down window.

Watches buildings blur.

Nothing moves inside her.

God, I wanted to live so

hard. To feel my body race.

Bleed. Fly. Instead, I kill the

best things inside me. Why,

God? And what curse awaits

when I’m twenty-five, thirty? What

scarred, dry belly…my

future, a curled leaf…

I’m scared. Nowhere to turn

but inside. Smaller. Smaller.

Trying not to burn anyone else

with my dumb, hot touch.

God, why won’t Angel turn

gold? Why ash?

Nas

Nobody knows we exist,

she whispers in the dark.

Your kind, my kind. They think you live to

steal cars, I live to sell beer & cigarettes.

Hannah feels liquid,

as if she might evaporate if she doesn’t cling

to Angel’s luminous ribs.

So? Who cares? he says,

stroking her messy hair.

I care. I care.

She pouts. He sighs & sings a Nas lyric —

like a blue smoke ~ ring, it halos the air.

Whose world is this? The world is yours…

He turns to sleep. She eyes the darkness.

Paradise (Angel)

It’s no use.

Never good enough.

Never smart enough.

No matter what I do.

She’ll never keep a baby of mine —

all